Like so many things of myth, the julep comes with a lot of expectations. And if you ask me, every one of them is a letdown. Every mint julep I’ve experienced either tasted like toothpaste (with a whiff of bourbon) or amounted to a glass of straight booze with few green leaves floating on top. I've even seen some lemon-lime sodas with bourbon and a sagging mint sprig pass themselves off as juleps. Derek Brown, director at the American Cocktail Museum, says “a poorly made mint julep is the frozen pizza or canned espresso of the cocktail world, icy cold and devoid of ritual.” I would go one step farther: I’ve never quit pizza after having frozen, but I've almost quit the julep.

Almost. With the Kentucky Derby right around the corner, and my dissatisfaction with jangled juleps at its peak, I decided to examine the mint julep at every level and create my own version.

I set out with some basic criteria: My julep needed to offer easy assembly for large batches at a Derby party. It had to nod to the years of julep tradition. And it couldn't involve lemon-lime soda.

"A julep is a dram of spirituous liquor that has mint in it, taken by Virginians of a morning.”—John Davis, British travel writer

The Muddled Mint

Kentucky humorist Irvin S. Cobb claimed that “a man who would let the crushed leaves and the mangled stemlets steep in the finished decoction would put scorpions in a baby’s bed.” Despite the strong opinion, for the sake of serving a crowd, we didn’t muddle our mint and left in the sprigs. Why? We found that it’s very easy to over-muddle mint leaves, releasing the chlorophyll in the leaf’s veins and bringing in that awful toothpaste flavor. We slapped the leaves instead before placing in the glass, releasing the mint oils and leaving the bitter flavors behind.

And while we're on the subject of mint: Julie Reiner, author of The Craft Cocktail Party, insists that mint should be bought less than 24 hours prior to using—otherwise it will get limp. If limpness happens, get it amped back up for your Derby party by placing the mint leaves-down in a rocks glass. Fill with water and crushed ice, and they ought to get some life back.

The Syrup

When it comes to mint juleps, nobody does them like New York’s Eleven Madison Park (EMP): Last year they went through 3,500 juleps, which called for 70-80 pounds of mint and almost 50 gallons of simple syrup.

A refined white sugar simple syrup gave my julep cloying (see: Crest toothpaste) sweetness—we needed something with a bit more depth. So we took a note from EMP’s bar manager James Betz, who uses turbinado sugar in his julep syrup. (He's not alone here: Forrest Williams of Louisville’s legendary Brown Hotel uses demerara in his juleps.)

“Turbinado sugar’s got a little more richness to it and some of those raisinated qualities,” says Betz, “There’s a certain weight that adds to the richness.”

So even though I’m a little hesitant about taking cues from Yankee bartenders, I settled on turbinado, which is less rich than demerara but easier to find (try Sugar in the Raw). I steeped mint sprigs in boiling sugar water to make a mint syrup that was rich enough to stand up to bourbon, with enough minty character to stand out.

The Ice

This leads us to the next important element: the ice. “In my opinion, the crushed ice is the most important part,” says Williams, the bartender at the Brown Hotel. “There’s really nothing in that drink to water it down, so it’s going to taste really strong if there’s no ice to water it down.” Even though it’s a two minute race, you should definitely pace yourself on whiskey-dominant cocktails.

If you don’t have access to an ice chipper or crushed ice attachment, check out using an old-fashioned Lewis bag for smashing ice.

Bourbon Choice

My julep history has run the full gamut—from inexpensive blends to single barrel bourbons. For our recipe, we tried wheated bourbons, but found that a bourbon with rye as the secondary grain worked wonders for adding some nice spice. We used Four Roses Single Barrel—a blend of 60% corn, 35% rye, and 5% barley.

The Brown Hotel uses a higher alcohol percentage, too. “The high proof stands up to the ice a little bit longer,” says Williams, “you don’t want it to be a glass of water by the time you’re finished with it.”

Presentation

The mint julep employs the build method, which calls for adding the ingredients in increments to layer the drink. Our julep starts off with aromatic leaves and syrup, followed by ice, followed by bourbon, followed by more ice. Layering a julep is crucial for the right balance and presentation.

The mint sprig is the one-and-only permissible garnish on a mint julep. Charles H. Baker, a Prohibition-era writer, stressed that “A julep is more than a mere chilled liquid; it is a tradition which is to be respected.” Southern writer Jonathan Miles also recommends keeping accoutrements simple, saying “it does not require, as a garnish, a televised horse race and a bunch of Yankees doing Foghorn Leghorn imitations.”

But how much mint? Chea Beckley, bar manager for Louisville’s Proof on Main, is at the center of Juleptown, USA. It took him 18 years of experience to zero in on the foolproof julep. His crucial pointer for presentation: the crucial mint sprig garnish needs 3-5 sprigs (for olfactory reasons).

About the glassware: Despite having the identical flavor, a julep’s not really a julep if it’s in a rocks glass. Check out Cocktail Kingdom for some legit cups in nickel, silver, and copper.